


A Story About the Olden Days

by SpinningYarns



Category: Newsies - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:53:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28461192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpinningYarns/pseuds/SpinningYarns
Summary: Jack comes to the Jacobs family during Hanukah and the family starts telling stories.
Kudos: 2





	A Story About the Olden Days

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the Newsies Winter Holiday Exchange 2020!  
> The prompt was, “a fic or headcanons with the Jacobs (any ship)" and this seemed like a good mix of the two. I'm submitting this as my contribution to the exchange, but I envisioned the rest of the family telling stories as well so it may be updated if/when inspiration and time happen to me simultaneously! I would very much like to add to it, but I hesitate to make firm promises in case I can't live up to them. 
> 
> Please note, also, I am not Jewish and therefore some of the details about Hanukkah as celebrated in the Jacobs household are based on a) holidays spent with friends and b) a little bit of internet research. I am certainly not an expert in Jewish traditions or the New York City Jewish immigrant community in the later 1800s. I have tried, but if I've gotten something wildly wrong, I'm open to critique and, if necessary to making changes.

“Jack!” Esther Jacobs was the first one to notice him coming in through the window, probably because she was sitting the closest to it and the cold air hit her before it made it’s sweeping way across the room to chill the rest of her family. “Come in, come in, and close that window before we’re wiping up snow!” But she was smiling as she said it, and Jack knew that the welcome was the part she meant.   
He slid through the window and closed it quickly behind him before sliding over to the fire to warm his hands and toes. “Heya, Dave,” he said through chattering teeth as David threw a blanket over his shoulder and handed him a cup of tea.   
“Glad you could make it!” David said. “You’re in time to light the candles with us.”   
“And eat dinner,” Les added, with great enthusiasm.   
“You don’t mind?” Jack asked.   
“Of course not,” several members of the family said.   
“I didn’t bring anything-” Jack started and David grinned at him.   
“It’s not Christmas,” he reminded his friend. “You didn’t have to.”   
“Right.” Jack was beginning to relax in the warmth and recall how David had explained Hannukah to him- the candles to be lit, the prayers to be said, and the food to be eaten. Les had promised to teach him how to spin a dreidel.   
So that was what they did. David loaned Jack a kippah, which felt strange on his head; he was used to wearing hats, but this wasn’t exactly a hat and his hats were larger, anyway. Jack reminded himself that perhaps he should relax.   
Since he didn’t know the words to the prayers, or exactly what to do when they were said, he watched David out of the corner of his eye and tried to copy him. It worked all right when he went to Mass with Racetrack sometimes and the Jacobs family was friendlier and better known than the strangers at Race’s church. When Jack realized they weren’t going to get upset at him for “doing it wrong”, he could finally relax and enjoy being there.   
Being with the Jacobs family always made him feel warm inside and happy. Esther hugged him just like she did her own kids, Mayer included him in the horrible jokes he told, and Sarah always had time to talk to him and listened to what he had to say. Les looked up to him like a brother, which was a lot of responsibility but in a good way, and David… well, David was his best friend. What more could he say? 

When the prayers were done, it was time to sit down to dinner, which Jack could smell coming from across the small flat. He helped David pour water into their glasses and took his usual seat, smiling to himself that he even had a “usual seat”.   
As promised, the food was wonderful and it more than made up for the fact that, in this cold weather, with the snow coming down thick and wet on the streets, there hadn’t been quite enough money for lunch.   
Sarah and David must have taken notice of how quickly he ate, because they exchanged worried looks. “Here, have another,” Sarah said, putting a couple more potato pancakes on his plate.   
“Thank you,” Jack said between mouthfuls. He was starting to slow down as he caught up on the missed meals from earlier in the day and finally, only a little embarrassed to be the last to finish, he sat back and sighed.   
Once they had cleared the table, the family moved to sit on the bed and in the chairs in the main part of the room. Les made good on his promise to teach Jack to play with a dreidel, but after a while, full and warm and happy, they stopped playing and while Les spun the dreidel all over the floor, Jack leaned against the bed frame and enjoyed the opportunity to just sit quietly, off his feet and warm enough.   
“Dad?” Les said after a few minutes, “Will you tell us a story?”  
“If you’d like,” Mayer agreed. “Do you have one in particular that you wanted?” Les shook his head, but he sat up and watched his father expectantly.   
Mayer rubbed his chin and thought for a moment, and then he grinned and began, “Once, there was a boy named Lester…”   
“Not that one!” Les said, and Jack wondered if this was a regular occurrence when Les asked for a story.   
“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you a new one,” Mayer laughed. He was quiet for a moment while he thought and then he said, “How about this one? You’ve never heard this one before.”   
“Is this a story about the olden days?” Les asked and Sarah said, “Les! We want to hear the story!” She sounded exasperated, but she was laughing, too.   
“Settle down,” Mayer said in a very mild tone of voice, more out of habit than because he thought they needed to hear it. “Now, where were we? Yes, this is a story about the olden days.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched. “It all begins right here in Manhattan, in… well, a good few years ago.”   
“You mean at Bubbe and Zayde’s flat? When you were a boy?”   
Mayer smiled. “Yes, that’s what I mean. I was not much older than David is now and it was the middle of winter. It had snowed so high that Bubbe made us go downstairs to the first floor and shovel Mrs. Moskowitz out because she couldn’t get the door open.”  
“So how did you get it open to get outside?” Les asked and Sarah shushed him, but Jack was fairly sure he had been serious, and it was a good question.   
“Once that was done, your uncle Noah and I decided we wanted to build a snow castle- we had heard somewhere that people in the far north live in them, although we didn’t know exactly how they were made.   
So the first thing we did was gather up all the snow we could shovel, which went well, since there was a lot of it and people were pleased to have the streets cleared a little. We were very popular, which was unusual for us.” He laughed. “You kids don’t know how much trouble Uncle Noah and I got into as children. We were terrible. But that day, everyone was happy we were being helpful and not getting into trouble. We even started building our snow castle on the side of the building, where there were no windows or doors on the ground floor, so we wouldn’t get in anybody’s way.”   
Jack wasn’t sure- it might have been just a coincidence- but he thought he saw Mrs. Jacobs smirking. He had just about convinced himself that he was imagining it when she and Sarah traded one of those looks that families seemed to have for each other, like they knew they were thinking the same thing. He wondered what that was all about, but he didn’t have to wait long to find out.   
“First we built a small snow house,” Mr. Jacobs said. “And that was all right, but it wasn’t as exciting as we hoped- it was very cold, for one thing. And then the roof fell in and buried Uncle Noah and I had to grab the Cohen boys from next door to help dig him out. They were busy throwing snowballs at pedestrians, but they stopped to help us.”  
“Mr. Cohen?” David asked, surprised. “Like, my teacher Mr. Cohen? Miriam’s father?” He looked completely perplexed that somebody as upstanding as a teacher might have spent his boyhood intentionally pestering strangers. The adults laughed and Jack, once again, got the feeling that there was more to the story.   
“David, we were all shocked when Joshua Cohen grew up to be a teacher. He was in and out of trouble constantly! But he turned out all right and his children are much better behaved than he was.”   
“He already knew all the tricks,” Mrs. Jacobs added. “They can’t try anything he didn’t do as a boy!”  
“Well, after that we didn’t know what to do with the house, since it wasn’t really a house anymore. We started shuffling around on top of the snow until we realized we were packing it down and then one of us- it, uh, it certainly wasn’t me-” (he was clearly lying, and smiling about it) “-got the grand idea to see how high we could pile the snow and if we could climb up it. It was just the five of us at first, but by the time we got finished, it stretched all the way up to the second floor. We’d really let the day get away from us and it was starting to get dark, but I wanted to climb to the top, so I started up. Noah was telling me to hurry up and come home, but I had to be at the top of our snow pile, in case it all melted by tomorrow.  
I was carving steps in the side as I went, and eventually I made it all the way to the top and, what do you know, I was right by somebody’s window. I suppose I forgot they could see me, because I just stood there for a minute looking in.”  
“That’s a little creepy,” Sarah said, and her father agreed.   
“I wasn’t really thinking, but of course somebody caught me. There was a girl inside the apartment and she saw me looking in and she screamed, and then I screamed, and then I fell all the way down the snow hill and knocked Noah right off his feet.” HIs children made exasperated noises and Mayer added, with a twinkle in his eye, “And that’s the first time I saw your mother.”   
“Wait, Mama, you were the girl?” Les demanded.   
“Yes,” she sighed. “Heaven knows how I ever spoke to your father afterwards.”  
“Obviously it went all right, in the end,” David said, ever logical. “But how did it happen?”  
“Your turn to tell a story!” Les cheered and his mother nodded and settled back in her chair, thinking it over.   
“It was not very long after we arrived from Poland,” Esther began. “You must remember, our home in Poland was… not much like New York City. It was quieter, although I think most places probably are! When we arrived, the whole city was strange and overwhelming. Fortunately, we had neighbors who had immigrated a few years before us and they helped us find a place to live, not in their building but near enough that we weren’t so alone. The seven of us moved into a flat a little smaller than this one and we were still getting used to having very little space- not like the open fields at home.”   
She looked like her mind was a long way away and Jack wondered how long it had been since she had been at home in Poland. A few context clues (the age of her children, for example, or the fact that she had very little accent and never seemed to search for English words) suggested that she had been here for quite some time.   
“We were trying to enjoy our first Hannukah in the new country, but you know, it can be very difficult to relax and enjoy yourself when everything is new. You don’t consider how many things will be different until you’re in the new place and the clothes all look different and you can’t find the food you like to eat, and of course we didn’t speak much English at all. Everything was new to us, all the time. And then one day, one more strange thing happened and I looked up and there was a boy looking in through our second-floor window. Well! That was the absolutely last thing I expected and I was so surprised by this latest strange thing that I screamed so loud your aunt Rivka came running in, thinking something awful had happened. And can you blame her?   
But of course, your father had already fallen off the snow hill by then, so all I could do was point at the window and try to tell her some horrible American boy had been up there peeking in our window. I don’t think she believed me until your father told us the whole story many years later.”   
“I would have believed you,” Les said loyally and David grinned. “Sorry Mama, but I might have wanted some proof, too.”  
“That’s very like you, dear. You take after Rivka tremendously!”  
“Who am I?” Les asked.   
“Noah!” the whole family chorused in unison and laughed.   
“Well, then who’s Sarah?”  
“I think Sarah is a lot like me,” Esther said with a smile at her daughter. Sarah looked up from her mending and smiled back; it was obviously a compliment.   
“Now,” Esther went on, “Imagine how surprised I was the next Shabbos when I went to temple and there, right before my eyes, was the boy who had looked in my window! I couldn't believe he was right there, and real. I tried to tell Rivka, of course, but she still didn’t believe me.   
Once I had seen your father for the first time, I started seeing him everywhere- you know how it is, like when you learn a new word and then you hear it often, until you remember what it means. Of course we went to synagogue together, and we lived in the same building…” Esther sighed and came back from whatever nostalgic place she had wandered off to.   
“And I thought your father was very odd and a little frightening, until the day he had to take me shopping.” She smiled. “It was in January, the year after he looked in my window, and the ladies at the synagogue organized hot meals for the poor. My family was doing just fine then, with all of us working, but we remembered how lean the early days in New York had been and we always liked to help. So Rivka and I had gotten to the synagogue early to help- we started by gathering all the women, making sure everyone had their assigned dish, and then going home to cook whatever it was in huge amounts. By pooling our money and buying ingredients together, we made sure that everyone could participate and do good, not only the wealthy members of the congregation. Well, we showed up and realized that we had underestimated how much we were going to be able to make. I believe it was soup and breads- that keeps well and it’s filling. So my Mama volunteered me to go to the market and buy what we needed. Which was very nice of her, but I didn’t want to go alone because I wasn’t sure exactly where it was, the one near the synagogue I mean, and I didn’t speak enough English.”  
“And that’s where I came in,” Mayer added. “Since I was helpfully escorting my Mama to synagogue-” Esther laughed and cut him off.   
“You walked your mother over in case there was cake,” she teased. “But yes, Mayer was there and his Mama suggested that he should go with me.”   
“So I took your mother’s arm, and off we went to-”   
“Not quite! If I recall correctly, you gave the cake a longing look and then we started down the street. We were both very quiet at first, until this strange boy started pointing out places he knew as we went. They weren’t places you would go to visit, but he started telling me about when he went to school as a child, and where his friends lived and it all seemed so wonderful, to think of New York as somebody’s home. It didn’t quite feel like my home, not yet, and I loved seeing it through his eyes.”  
Her gaze had gone a little dreamy and Jack wondered with a start what that must be like for her children, to have parents who felt this way about each other. Not for the first time, he was deeply envious and, at the same time, grateful to have been invited into this family.   
“And was that when you decided to get married?” Les asked innocently, looking offended when his family laughed.   
“No, sweetie,” Esther explained. “We weren’t quite old enough then, and you want to get to know somebody rather better than that before you marry them. But we became friends, which is a very good start.”


End file.
